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Alumni Interview: Akira Minamoto, General Incorporated Association Tachikawa Athletic FC Trustee and Tachikawa Athletic FC player
- November 14, 2022
Profile.
Akira Minamoto
Born in Chiba Prefecture in 1987, Akira Minamoto graduated from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Design, Faculty of Engineering in 2009. He has been a member of Fuchu Athletic FC since he was a student and played in the F-League since 2009. 2012-2013: Played in the Spanish league. 2021: FIFA World Cup Lithuania. 2022: Appointed as the President of Tachikawa Athletic FC in March 2022.
Through sports, I want to bring color to people's lives and vitality to the city.
Akira Minamoto, who has played futsal for 15 years in the F-League and represented Japan in the FIFA Futsal World Cup, has been involved in club management since 2022, and he feels that his former dreams and learning from his student days have led him to where he is today.
Making a new start as a player and manager
At Tachikawa Athletic FC, a futsal club, I am "two-faced," training as a player on weekday mornings, performing sales and administrative duties as the club's Trustee in the afternoons, and playing matches on the weekends.
The reason for this was that the club moved its home base due to a change in arena standards, and the club's management was transferred to a new corporation. I had thought that I would be on the management side in the future, so I had no hesitation in accepting the position of Trustee, but I had a lot of doubts about whether or not I would take this opportunity to retire. In the end, I decided to remain active because I judged that if the Trustee also served as a player, it would create a buzz, differentiate the club, and be positive for the management.
The first thing I set out to do as Trustee was to sort out "what not to do" rather than "what to do. Although it would be ideal to arrive on the day before the tour, depending on the location and time of the match, it would not be too much of a problem to arrive on the day of the tour. I feel that such decisions and review of conventions from the perspective of the players are something I am able to do because I am a two-sport athlete.
Mr. Minamoto says, "As long as I am needed by the team, I will continue to be active.
Entering school to become a public servant who wants to be involved in community development
When I was a high school student, I had the idea that I would like to be involved in urban development in the future. So I decided to study urban development and become a public servant, and entered the Faculty of Engineering at Hosei University (at the time).
I wanted to focus on one thing at a time in my university studies, so I joined Professor Toshiaki Mizobuchi's seminar on concrete research, not because of my interests but rather because of the rigorous instruction I would receive. Every day I would mix sand, water, and cement in various mixtures to make concrete lumps, leave them in different environments, and then break them after a few days to analyze their strength.
When I look for a direction for operations now, I can take the approach of changing this part of A slightly and that part next, rather than changing the method completely from A to B. This may be thanks to the logical thinking I acquired at the seminar.
Also, upon entering university, I joined Fuchu Athletic FC (the predecessor of the current club), which is located near the Koganei campus where the Faculty of Engineering was located at the time. I had played soccer up until high school, but I felt that futsal, with its smaller court and fewer players, was more suited to me.
My hunch was right, and by the time my classmates were looking for jobs, I had decided to become a futsal player. It was right around the time the F-League was born, and I envisioned a future with the Japanese national team and the top league in Spain.
In 2011, he moved to Puerto Jarno FS of the Spanish First Division. Photo shows the press conference for joining the team.
Role model for boosting the city through sports is Spain
In his third year after graduation, he ventured to Spain and played in the Spanish league for two years. In a small provincial town with almost no entertainment, I saw how futsal support was a part of people's lives, and I thought from the bottom of my heart, "I love this kind of town.
This became my original experience, and after returning to the F-League, I became conscious not only of playing as a player, but also of creating a buzz to let people know about futsal and come to watch the games.
And now that I am in charge of club management, I am working in earnest to realize the role model in Spain. Children dream of becoming futsal players, and adults look forward to weekends as they make more friends through cheering. In this way, the club becomes a presence that adds color to people's lives, and the circle of supporters expands to enliven the entire town. And if more people get involved with the club, the players will have more options for their second careers. With this belief, I am working hard to plant seeds in order to spread the club's existence in the local community.
Of course, I am also anxious. Whenever I have a hard time or lose confidence, I ask myself, "Why am I doing this? If I can confirm that my belief that I want to enliven the town and futsal is unshakable, then I can overcome the difficulties and stay the course.
What you work on will lead somewhere.
I thought that I had gone down a path that had nothing to do with what I had learned at university, but looking back, I see that my future dream at the time of my enrollment, the experiments in my seminar, my experience in Spain, and everything else have led me to where I am today.
In your 20s, you may not be able to see what lies ahead, and you may often feel lost. At such times, try to work hard at what is in front of you, regardless of whether or not it is directly related to your goals. Eventually, you will develop a kind of root in yourself, and you will be able to make use of your previous experience somewhere else.
I intend to continue my two-faced approach for a few more years, and in 10 years, I will have created a role model as a professional sports club in Tachikawa before moving on to the next step. If I can boost futsal, the sport I have devoted my life to, becoming CEO of the F-League is one option, and I may even start a sports club in another city. For this purpose, I would like to develop my skills as a manager.
Home games for the 2022-23 season: Saturday, November 26, Saturday, January 14, and Friday, January 27.
For more information, please visit the official website of Tachikawa Athletic FC ( https://tachikawa-athletic.jp)
(First published in the October 2022 issue of Hosei, a public relations magazine)